Chapter XII

For sleeping England long time have I watched;

Watching breeds leanness, leanness is gaunt.

William Shakespeare, Richard II

The next evening Terry was off on a flight to Zurich. Brennan and Molly had tickets to see Metropolis at the Piccadilly Theatre. They were about to leave the flat when the telephone rang. Molly said, “Oh, I shouldn’t bother. We’re running late.”

“Answer it. We’ve got time.”

“Hello. Who is this? What? I can’t hear you. No, please, say it again. I don’t understand. Tell me who you are. How do you know this?” A couple of seconds went by, then, “What did you say?”

Brennan moved towards her. He was about to grab the receiver, but he heard a click and the dial tone. Molly was so agitated she could not get the receiver back onto the hook. Brennan took it from her and replaced it.

“It was the same man. Same traffic noise in the background.”

“What did he say?”

“He said, ‘The Yard have the fingerprints from Heath’s door. See what the prisoner has to say about that!’”

“What else did he say?”

“Nothing. Gobbledegook.”

“Well, what was it, nothing or gobbledegook?”

“I think he was making a sick joke. You know, how the ’RA have codes. He seemed to be slagging me about that.”

“Molly, what did he say?”

“He thinks I’m Conn’s sister, which I guess explains why he’s calling me. When I answered, he said, ‘Tell your brother I haven’t forgotten that we shared the loopy lady.’ As if things weren’t bad enough, he takes the opportunity to make a smutty remark about some woman. And if this is someone who really shared a girlfriend with Conn … or shared a tart … who the hell is he and why is he doing this to Conn? Would someone set him up for a murder charge because of an old sexual rivalry?” She looked closely at Brennan. “What?”

She must have caught something in his expression. Might as well own up. “It’s possible.”

“Men!”

“But he did call her ‘loopy,’ meaning crazy, so this may not have been a lasting love that he’s been in mourning for.”

“Well, it’s beside the point anyway. The prints are the point.”

“And we’re back to the same question: who other than the police would know about them?”

“Put it out of your head for now, Brennan. The stage beckons.”

Metropolis, disturbing in its depiction of a dystopian future with the working class toiling away at machines underground and the rich frolicking in skyscrapers above, prompted Brennan and his sister to imagine a cast composed of people they had met in England, including Cedric Mawdsley as one of the idle rich and Detective Constable Clive Peck fuming underground, while Babs Mundle made the tea.

“Where would we cast John Chambers?” Molly asked.

“We’d have him, in place of me, sitting beside you as you watched the show.”

The excursion took their minds off their family troubles, at least for a while.

†

The BBC Radio news the next morning was of great interest in the Molly Burke residence in Kilburn.

“There has been a surprising development in connection with a murder in Essex earlier this spring. Our correspondent Emma Langford reports from Colchester.”

“Essex police have announced that the man killed in Colchester at the end of April of this year, the man originally identified as Patrick Michael Doyle, was in actual fact Liam Michael O’Brien, a thirty-six-year-old immigrant from the Republic of Ireland. The police say Mr. O’Brien lived in a rural area outside Chelmsford in Essex County. It is now known as well that he was married and was the father of four children living in Ireland. Mr. O’Brien was originally from Kilmacthomas in County Waterford and had been living in England for the past seven years. He was a gardener by trade and operated his own landscaping business under the name Patrick Doyle. Earlier reports were that the man had been beaten to death, and that his injuries were such that it was difficult for anyone to recognize his face. Police say they have been provided with no information that would alter their conclusion as to the cause of death. Asked why Mr. O’Brien had been living under a false name, and how he was able to conceal his true identity, the police were tight-lipped except to say that this aspect of the story would obviously form an important part of the investigation.”

Brennan looked at Molly. “An Irishman living here under a false name. This gets more and more shady by the day.”

“And why do I suspect that the more we learn, the darker it’s going to get?”

†

Two days later, Brennan left work at St. Andrew the Scot and met Molly in Kew Gardens, one of her favourite attractions in London. She offered a running commentary on the rhododendrons, water lilies, bluebells, and other spring flowers that dazzled the eye as she and Brennan walked some of the three hundred acres of parkland. Brennan particularly liked the glasshouses.

“Leave it to you, Brennan. Five million flowers and you like the buildings. But I’ll grant you, the glasshouses are spectacular.”

“As are the flowers,” he was quick to say.

“If only life could be this beautiful all the time.”

“You mean without people being murdered, and cousins being charged, and women and children facing an uncertain future, and you being spied upon and imprisoned without charge, all of that?”

“Yes, those are aspects of life I could do without. Though I have to say I had an interesting experience with the police today.”

“What? I leave you alone for a day, to go off and serve the poor and the devout, and the police immediately move in on you?”

“No, it was more benign than that.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I looked out and saw Chambers. Saw his car. What they get out of sitting in front of someone’s flat, I don’t know.”

“Whatever it is, I don’t think we would regard it as benign. They’re watching you and taking note of whoever comes and goes. Your rebel contacts.”

“But what if there aren’t any comings and goings? Which is most of the time. The only ‘person of interest’ the police would ever see is Conn. And they know he’s not coming or going anywhere these days.”

“So what happened? Did they sit out there all day?”

“I took pity on them. Made them a cup of tea.”

“Jaysus! Taking tea out to the peelers who are spying on you and, for all we know, just waiting for a reason to cart you off to the nick again.”

“Now, Brennan, they’re just doing their jobs like the rest of us.”

“All right. Go on. You went out with the tea. What was their reaction to that?”

“Well, it turned out it was Chambers by himself, having a smoke. Peck wasn’t there.”

“Ah.”

“And I had two cups of tea, so I gestured with my head to the passenger door. He opened it, and I got in and handed him his cup and I had mine.”

“What did he say? Did he look a little sheepish to be caught out?”

“Not at all. If there was any sheepishness, he covered it well.”

Earlier that day

“It’s not often I get such friendly service.” He crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, then rolled down his window and tried to wave some of the smoke out of the car.

“Perhaps the fact that you’re spying on people puts you on the wrong foot with them.”

“Never thought of that.” He raised his cup and took a sip. “All these years, sitting in the car conducting surveillance and wondering, ‘Where’s the tea? Where’s the hospitality?’ And now you tell me it may be my own doing.”

Looking at him, Molly wished she had brought out a couple of scones or biscuits as well; even in the two weeks since his first visit — first interrogation — he seemed to have lost weight. His face was thinner and he looked as if he could use a few long nights of uninterrupted sleep.

“Lovely cup of tea. Delivered by —” he cleared his throat and went on “— a lovely subject of inquiry, if I may say so.”

She was taken aback by the unexpected compliment but quickly recovered. “Nobody has ever said that to me before, Detective … or, may I call you John?”

“Please do. And if I might call you Molly …”

“Of course.”

They took a moment to savour their tea.

“All this is new to me,” said Molly.

“That’s what they want you to think.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m only joking you. Isn’t that what they say in your country of origin? Joking you?”

“It is. You should visit the place. Spend some time in Ireland. You’ll find there’s more to us than ‘subjects of inquiry.’”

“I have been there. I’ve been to Belfast.”

“Leave it to you, John, and God love you and save you, but leave it to a Special Branch man to think he’s seen Ireland if he’s seen Belfast in the midst of the latest Troubles.”

“But Belfast is Ireland, according to your politics. Correct?”

“Aye aye, sir, correct. The entire island is Ireland and should be united without the border between the Republic and the Six Counties your lot kept to themselves. But there are great differences between the various parts of Ireland. A great deal of variety among the Twenty-Six Counties of the South as well. Just ask a Cork man about a Kerry man, or either of them about a jackeen from Dublin!”

“I’m sure that’s true. I would like to see the country. Not in my official capacity.”

“What do you do for holidays, John? Do you get away from it all? Take the family to the seaside? Skiing in Austria?”

“No family holidays for me. Not anymore.”

Molly wasn’t sure if she should follow up on that, but to ignore what he said might seem unsympathetic. “Why not?”

“My wife got good and fed up with me sitting out in my car all hours having tea with lovely female subversives.”

“I’d like to own up to two of those three words.”

“If the shoe fits …”

“But you say this sort of tea party is a rare experience in your line of duty, so it must have been something else that went wrong in your marriage.”

He didn’t respond but gazed out the window of the police car.

“I’m sorry, John, I shouldn’t have asked. I’m not the prying type, usually. Really, I’m not.”

He turned to her and smiled. “I don’t consider it prying. And even if I did, who am I to complain? I spend all my working life prying into the lives of others. To answer your question, it was the long hours, the calls in the middle of the night, interrupted or cancelled holidays, concern about what would happen to me when I left for my shift, all of that. Plus the tension this sort of work inevitably brings to a person, to a relationship. I would be short-tempered with her for no rational reason, nothing she did. It was the buried tension coming out.”

Everything he said about his work and the effect it had on his marriage sounded painfully real to Molly; wasn’t that exactly what would happen? But, at the same time, it also had the sound of a pat answer. She could easily imagine any police officer or soldier giving the same response. She couldn’t have said why, but she wondered if something else had happened, something else that accounted for the collapse of his marriage.

“But what am I doing?” he said. “I shouldn’t be unloading all of this on you. You say you’re not the prying sort, and I can tell you I’m not usually like this, banging on and on about deeply personal matters.”

“I believe you, John. From the little I’ve seen of you, I think you are a very self-contained person, not one given to personal disclosures. I would suggest that you do more of this, not less. It’s a cliché but I’ll say it anyway: it is not good to keep things bottled up. Little wonder it comes out when little irritations crop up.”

Chambers said, in the manner of a toffee-nosed aristocrat, “When one is British, one doesn’t speak of such matters. One keeps calm and carries on.”

“And you do that admirably, Detective Sergeant Chambers. Did I read that the father of John Mortimer, the barrister and author, was a lawyer too? The father, that is. And he was blind, and wouldn’t admit it? And that nobody was to acknowledge it? Do I have that right?”

“Of course. He never let on. One doesn’t let on.”

“It’s a good thing you have a sense of humour, John. That must make life a little easier for you. The things you must see in your line of work. I’m not the hardest of hardened criminals you’ve ever dealt with, surely.”

“You’re a tough nut to crack, Burke, but you are correct. I have seen worse in my day.”

She looked at him and waited until she caught his gaze. “How much worse?”

All merriment gone, he replied. “You have no idea. No idea what one human being will do to another, and what we have to do sometimes in our work to try and stop it.” He drained the rest of his tea as if it were whiskey. Or, well, gin.

“But you feel strongly about what you do. That you’re doing the right thing?”

“I am doing the right thing, Molly. Of that I am certain.”

†

“Then his car radio crackled,” Molly told her brother, “and he had to take a call, so I took my tea things and went back inside. I looked out a few minutes later and he had gone.”